Sugar can be as addictive as a drug, scientists say. Professor Bart Hoebel of Princeton University and his fellow researchers in the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have studied the effects of sugar on rats for years. They had found in previous sugar addiction experiments that rats met two of the three criteria for addiction—increasing intake and signs of withdrawal. But until now, the third element of withdrawal—craving and relapse had been missing.
“If bingeing on sugar is really a form of addiction, there should be long-lasting effects in the brains of sugar addicts,” Hoebel said. “Craving and relapse are critical components of addiction and we have been able to demonstrate these behaviors in sugar-bingeing rats.”
The rats were fed sugar and learned to binge. When sugar was withdrawn, the rats worked harder to get it when it was reintroduced and ate more sugar than before. “In this case, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” Hoebel said. His team found that when rats binged on sugar, their brains released dopamine, a chemical believed to increase motivation. With repetition, it eventually leads to addiction.
The rats drank more alcohol after their sugar supply had been removed, showing that bingeing had caused changes in brain function which served as “gateways” to other means of destructive behavior. The rats also became supersensitive to amphetamines.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
|
